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Jaguar XKR-S mule drive shows convertible's potential

November 14, 2011

The supercharged V8 in the Jaguar XKR-S mule is rated at 550 hp.

This is, if not the greatest Jag ever built, certainly one of the top two or three. Oh heck, let's just say it is the greatest Jaguar ever built--even though our car was just an engineering prototype mule.

The Jaguar XKR-S convertible is the performance version of the XKR, which was itself pretty performance-oriented to begin with. So it's double-performance-oriented, like double-secret probation. It wrings another 40 hp and 41 lb-ft of torque from the XKR's 5.0-liter supercharged V8. With that power and torque the mighty XKR-S rockets to 60 mph in 4.2 seconds and--here's the difference a Jag makes--feels perfectly comfortable doing it. Comparisons that came to mind while we were driving it were with two-seaters, not this car's 2+2 configuration. We thought of the Mercedes-Benz SLS and a few Astons Martin. There are only a handful of GTs that compete with it.

We drove the coupe version of the XKR-S last June and ran out of laudatory words after only a few paragraphs. The convertible version is the same only more: more stylish, more exclusive, more expensive. Jaguar will bring only 25 of these into the United States in 2012, priced at $138,000 each. Be sure and comment below that a Chevrolet Corvette/Cadillac CTS-V/Mitsubishi 3000GT/Volga Sputnik/whatever will do "the same thing fer half tha' price!" While you might find a faster, less expensive car, it would be difficult to find one that achieved this speed and composure while transmitting such confidence from behind the wheel and doing it so effortlessly.

Our ride had a roll cage welded up around the cockpit, which of course won't be on the production version, so our open-air experience was slightly muted as far as sunshine and wind-in-the-hair sensibilities. But the power delivery and remarkable handling were not muffled one bit.

Our drive took place on 11 miles of twisty roadway in the Santa Monica Mountains near Los Angeles. Jag might have picked out the nicest pavement for our drive, combined with some of the faster, more open curves. But the car is said to perform just as well on less forgiving tarmac.

"The car has a lot of traction," said test driver Sascha Bert, who piloted our same XKR-S mule to a Nürburging Nordschliefe time of 7 minutes, 59 seconds (the coupe did 7:51). "There are a lot of bumps on this track. The XKR-S has such a fast ABS that you can brake really late without getting that lockup in the brakes over bumps. And with the locking differential you can use the traction better exiting the corners."

We weren't driving quite that fast but certainly were just as impressed by the XKR-S's minimal, well-controlled roll and the rebound of the shocks over high-speed bumps and indentations. In the Kanan-Dume tunnel, we slowed to blast the pedal just to hear the exhaust. Going from Mulholland back on to Kanan we felt the differential kick in a bit suddenly. The rev limiter was similarly sudden (the six-speed automatic holds gears at redline). Those two traits stood out on what was otherwise an extremely smooth car.

The XKR-S is making its public debut at the Los Angeles auto show on Wednesday. It will hit showrooms in April or March. Get to your dealer and start making promises now.

Mark Vaughn
- After slumming in Europe five years covering F1 etc. Mark Vaughn interviewed with Autoweek at the 1989 Frankfurt motor show has been with us ever since because no one else will take him. Anyone?
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